Walking With Wikis:Featured articles/2013 archive
This is an archive of 2013's featured articles. December 2013 Liopleurodon was a pliosaur and perhaps the mightiest aquatic predator of all time. Its long body would have cruised silently through the shallow seas of the late Jurassic, propelled by its flapping flippers. Its size is a topic of considerable debate; the largest pliosaur specimens are not attributed to the Liopleurodon genus and are 18 m long. The longest confirmed Liopleurodon fossils are estimated to have grown up to 15 m (although some fossils still show that they could have grown to 25 m and weighed 150 tonnes). A massive sea predator with four flippers, they are the biggest, carnivorous reptiles ever. They are awe-inspiring sea monsters. Liopleurodon was a hunter. Its long jaws and rows of needle-sharp teeth would have made marine crocodiles, the giant fish Leedsichthys, ichthyosaurs and even other pliosaurs vulnerable to attack. (Read more...) November 2013 Diplodocus was a 30 meter long, 15-25 ton sauropod dinosaur from the late Jurassic time period (155 - 145 MYA) that lived on the territory of the modern Western United States. Other potential Diplodocus ''speciemens, as ''Seismosaurus, were 15 meters longer and weighed nearly 7 times as much, making Diplodocus perhaps the biggest dinosaur on Earth. Diplodocus was one of, if not, the longest sauropod animals ever to live. Seismosaurus, a synonym of Diplodocus, was 39-53.9 meters long (45 meters on average) and possibly over 100 tonnes in weight making it the longest animal that has ever existed and possibly the largest land animal. In fact, it was so large that even a pack of allosaurs wasn't able to hunt fully grown specimens (though they would attack individuals which are weak, sick, old, injured and young). They lived in huge herds, sometimes up to 100 dinosaurs, led by a matriarch, as the modern elephants do. (Read more...) October 2013 The Woolly mammoth (known for being one of the most, if not, the most the most famous, popular, and endangered mammalian animal of the Pleistocene) was a prehistoric relative of modern-day elephants, just as its cousin, the Columbian mammoth, was. It is undoubtedly one of the most popular animals of the Pleistocene. Woolly mammoths also lived in huge herds. Woolly mammoths had a number of adaptations to the cold, most famously the thick layer of shaggy hair, up to 1 meter in length with a fine under wool, for which the woolly mammoth is named. The coats probably moulted in summer to cool off, otherwise it will overheat and die. They also had far smaller ears than modern elephants; the largest mammoth ear found so far was only 30 cm (12 in) long, compared to 180 cm (71 in) for an African elephant. Other characteristic features included a high, peaked head that appears knob-like in many cave paintings and a high shoulder hump resulting from long spines on the neck vertebrae that probably carried fat deposits. (Read more...) September 2013 Brontoscorpio was the largest scorpion ancestor ever lived during the Silurian period. It had a large stinger about the size of a lightbulb and the stinger itself can deliver a powerful venom that paralyzed prey. Brontoscorpio also had 2 pairs of pincers with the larger pincers used for grasping prey and the smaller pincers used for tearing apart prey. Brontoscorpio hunted small marine animals like Cephalaspis and trilobites. Brontoscorpio adapted strong jaws for crushing and tearing apart the tough armored body of its prey. (Read more...) August 2013 Smilodon was the biggest and most powerful sabre-toothed cat of all times, and defiantly the most famous prehistoric cat. It lived in North and South America at 2.5 million to 100,000 years ago. Originaly from North America, Smilodon came to South America 2 million years ago and replaced the native hunters, Phorusrhacos, as top predators. Smilodon was over 100 to 500 kg depending on the species. (Read more...) Category:Featured article archives